A DOULTON LAMBETH STONEWARE CIRCULAR HIGH-RELIEF WALL PLAQUE BY GEORGE TINWORTH

The inscription is taken from Chapter 8, verse 20 of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament Bible and reads in full: 'Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.' The plaque is almost certainly from the pulpit exhibited by Doulton at the 1876 Philadelphia exhibition.

George Tinworth (1843-1913) was apprenticed to his father as a wheelwright before enrolling in 1861 in evening classes in sculpture at the Lambeth School of Art, studying under John Sparks and Edwin Bale. In 1864, he was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools. He joined the Royal Doulton Potteries, Lambeth, in 1867 and remained there until his death in 1913. M. H. Spielmann, in his British Sculpture and Sculptors of Today (1901), noted that 'apart from the legitimate designs for pottery and the like, dramatic high-relief panels with numerous figures on a small scale have absorbed the energies of Mr Tinworth'. Tinworth exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1866 and 1885. In 1875, he showed a series of small terracotta panels depicting religious scenes, which were praised by the critic John Ruskin.